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The Story of the Pedophile-catching Hacker
missing30 writes "A Turkish hacker seeding usenet groups with trojan horses has made it a habit to hunt down pedophiles trolling the groups. The cases go back to 2000, with the mysterious good samaritan responsible for several arrests. The man now has tacit approval from the FBI for his actions." From the article: "At the urging of Montgomery Police Capt. Kevin Murphy, '1069' eventually turned over more and more information that led back to a computer owned by Bradley Joseph Steiger, who had worked as an emergency room physician in Alabama. The hacker's finds included information from Steiger's AT&T WorldNet account, records from his checking account, and a list of directories on his computer's hard drive where sexually explicit photographs were stored."
This hacker obviously planted that child pornography on my computer with a trojan, in an attempt to blackmail me, a promonent local physician...
As I read the brief article it defiantly made me consider both sides of the story; however, in the end I side with my heart. Fuck the kid touchers, let em' rot. This guy could be doing some real garbage cracking, screwing with legit business and good people, but, he didn't. He went after the scum. I agree 100% with 1069. Go for it!
Before I get the crap flamed out of me I will remind, it's just my opinion.
Otherwise, anyone in ... say Russia for example, can crack your computer and search for child pornography ... and credit card numbers.
Also, they also can plant the pornography themselves, once they root the user's box.
There's a big difference here. Normally, when you have an informant, they either need to give the police enough information to go and do the investigation themselves and find the conclusive evidence; or, if they come up with the evidence themselves (or provide a lot of very specific information), then they usually have to go and testify in court.
In this case, the 'mystery hacker' basically came up with the evidence (he told them exactly where to find it, and he had ample opportunity to have planted it), but he's not in a position where he could easily testify. Because he had access to the defendant's computer (illegally), but can't come testify (because he's in Turkey, because the police don't know who he is, whatever), it seems like they're giving the guy a good defense that the evidence was planted.
It's just sloppy policework.
For a phyiscal-goods example, it's as if somebody dropped a dime on you and told the police that when they had broken into your car earlier in the day to steal your radio, they saw that you had a baggie of heroin in the ashtray. So the police go and arrest you, and find the bag of heroin. Without being able to track down the informant and get their testimony, or some form of physical evidence linking the bag to you in such a way that doesn't leave you with a planted-evidence defense, they have a pretty weak case. (Unless they can get you to confess, which is actually pretty common.)
I'll be interested in seeing what the outcome of this case actually is. If they guy doesn't negotiate some sort of plea deal, and the only thing they found on his computer was the porn that the hacker told them about, I think he has a pretty good chance of either getting off, or forcing the police to find some way of getting the hacker to come in and testify.
Allowing in evidence that was obtained in this manner would be a mistake, and justice wouldn't be served in the long run by it, even if the immediate consequence was letting the guy off the hook.
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Believe me, I find the thought of an abused child with a warped world view infinitely sad too, as does most other pedophiles (and most other people with their sanity intact). The point is that pedophilia is not illegal, because pedophilia is not an action. When you use it to depict an action, you advocate the criminalization of millions of perfectly law-abiding morally aware human beings. You are part of the process which indoctrinates these people into thinking "I am a pedophile, and all my life society has told me that pedophiles act such and such, so I guess I'm worthless and I'll act that way." No, you're not a bad person and you don't have to act that way. We have support groups telling these people that, but we don't reach everybody. You couldn't imagine the suicide rate among young pedophiles. That is another thing I find infinitely sad.
Most child sexual abusers are not pedophiles (as in they're not attracted to children, but the child is just a convenient outlet of sexual frustration), and most producers of child pornography are not pedophiles (they are the Russian mafia, stone cold cynical when it comes to making money). Most pedophiles are not child sexual abusers. Please call a spade a spade; if you mean child sexual abusers, don't say "pedophile".